PIATA is an innovative and transformative partnership and financing vehicle to drive inclusive agriculture transformation across the continent.

Three development partners, which include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have jointly pledged up to U.S. $280 million to catalyse and sustain inclusive agricultural transformation in Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.

This is aimed at increasing incomes and improving food security of 30 million smallholder farmers.

"We are pleased to be part of PIATA. We see it as an opportunity to leverage even more from the partners and their huge networks, for greater impact,” said Mr. Mamadou Biteye, Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation Africa Regional Office during the launch of the initiative.

“We are looking forward to deploying the technologies that we have helped develop over the years, together with our shared knowledge and grant support, to work with our esteemed partners. Together we hope to catalyze Africa’s pursuit for prosperity through agriculture,” he told delegates at the AGRF in Abidjan.

The PIATA is an important collaboration between donors that aligns behind the Malabo agenda agreed to by African Heads of State and Government in 2014. It signals an enduring commitment to Africa’s transformation agenda. PIATA is but one of various means by which each of the partners are supporting African countries to deliver on agricultural transformation; its partners continue to provide support through avenues including direct support to continental agencies, government bodies and in-country partners. The partnership will allow partners to align and complement existing efforts, making new investments in developing input systems, value chains, and policy where they will have the most impact.

According to the 2017 Africa Agriculture Status Report, Africa needs an agricultural revolution that is distinct and that links millions of small farms to agribusinesses, creating extended food supply chains, jobs and economic opportunities for large segments of the population. Agriculture is still the best bet for inclusive African economic growth and poverty reduction.

Experts believe that such a transformation will require greater political, policy, and financing commitments from across the public and private sectors. It will also require new partnership models like PIATA, which is hailed as an outstanding example of how partners can collaborating with African countries' visions and systems to deliver on their own transformation, in line with their national economic development strategies.

Mr. Rodger Voorhies, the Executive Director of the Global Growth and Opportunity Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said, “We’ve seen significant progress when countries recognize the critical importance of agriculture to their economic development and help catalyze agricultural transformation with targeted investments, evidence-based policies, and strong national plans. PIATA is an exciting platform that can help countries take the lead in driving agricultural transformation. Our investment reflects our desire to help countries develop high-quality plans linked to national and continental accountability frameworks.”

It was also observed that delivering on Africa’s potential requires both the public and private sectors to engage in new ways and strengthen collaboration. The role of the private sector and non-state actors in agriculture development and in support of formulation of country agriculture plans is critical for sustainable growth.

This was emphasized by Mr. Sean Jones, the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Food Security, USAID. “PIATA offers a new way of doing business across the many public and private actors working to ensure food security and economic growth as called for in country-owned visions and the goals laid out in the Malabo Declaration. Agriculture is at its core a private sector enterprise, and one of the best bets for job creation and inclusive growth when the right policies and investments allow the private sector to flourish. This partnership offers an innovative mechanism to unlock this investment and realize many of the targets laid out in the Global Food Security Strategy approved by our Congress.”

The PIATA launch comes at a critical time in the continent’s agriculture history. Most African countries have undertaken a rigorous review of the sector, developing and adopting a new generation of sector development plans that prepare them to do business. Continentally, the African Union is coordinating the biennial review of the progress made towards the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) goals, which will be presented in the first Biennial Review Report, along with a scorecard for the Heads of State to guide them in the sector’s transformation.

Welcoming the new partnership, Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), expressed her belief that the initiative would contribute significantly to accelerating Africa’s path to prosperity by growing inclusive economies and jobs through agriculture.

“We have witnessed significant progress in our agricultural transformation over the past decade, with countries that have prioritized the sector recording notable drops in poverty levels, improved food security and inclusive economic growth. PIATA will be critical in bringing key players together to support governments in their push to fully unlock the potential of Africa’s smallholder farming and agribusiness as the surest drivers of job creation and the continent’s inclusive economic transformation,” she said.

AGRA is the primary implementing institution of the partnership under the institution’s new strategy for the continent and plan agreed with priority countries.

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance on Friday last week organized a successful workshop that brought together 30 participants from pastoralist communities, CSOs, government and the private sector to discuss and share experiences on promoting climate resilient pastoralism in Kenya.

The workshop sought to arrive at a common approach to achieving resilience in order to manage the risks posed by climate variation and change.

During the workshop participants shared tools, methods, and approaches to enhance learning and innovative ways to implement Community Based Adaptation, DRM, sustainable development and climate information services that they could incorporate into their lives and work to improve livelihoods of pastoralist communities.

The workshop focused on five thematic areas including promoting multi stakeholder interactions, governance, and policy, promoting community ownership and aspirations, risk management, and climate resilient investments in pastoralist areas.

Pastoralists in Kenya are among the most vulnerable to climate change variability with droughts in East Africa becoming more severe and frequent while less predictable.

According to the Kenya Meteorological Department, even the much anticipated March-April-May rains did very poorly across the country, most parts of the country experiencing below normal rainfall with areas remaining sunny and dry throughout the month of March 2017.

“Due to this increasing vulnerability, pastoralists need to be supported not only to maintain the extraordinary resilience inherent in their traditional way of life, but also to adapt and – for some – to create viable alternative livelihoods in and beyond the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), which increase the adaptive capacity and build resilience of pastoralist communities,” noted the Julius Karanja, a project assistant with PACJA who organized the workshop.

The necessary support is in the form of climate information and products, agro-advisory services, as well as support to enhance and utilize their indigenous knowledge.

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance in collaboration with Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) consortium - a partnership of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), will in October organize the 7th Climate Change and Development in Africa Conference (CCDA-VII).

The conference will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya starting October 11 to October 13, 2017, with the theme this year being: “Implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Africa: From Policies to Action”.

This year, CCDA is expected to attract 400-500 participants. Specific constituencies expected to attend from within and outside of Africa include researchers, academia, policy makers, parliamentarians, negotiators, development partners, intergovernmental organizations, media professionals, Multilateral Development Banks, the private sector, civil society, and youth and gender groups.

The meeting aims to critically examine the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of African countries and Africa’s readiness to translate NDCs into actionable development plans and programmes, assess the effectiveness of mechanisms to provide adequate means of implementation to meet the required levels of ambition; and examine global political economy issues for the effective implementation of NDCs in support of sustainable, inclusive and climate-resilient development on the continent.

CCDA-VII will be organized into five sub-themes constituting the “the 5 ‘Is’ of implementing the Paris Agreement in Africa” – Intentions, Interests, Issues, Investments, and Inventory.

This project seeks to scale-up existing CS capacities to advocate for ambitious proposals, bring on-the-ground expertise to the table, help embed GCF-funded activities in a broader societal support for transformation and increase accountability of national authorities underscoring the reality that Civil Society engagement is key to achieve the intended paradigm shift towards low-emissions and climate-resilient economies and societies (GCF funding mandate) which the GCF aims at.

The project aims to support broader African CS engagement in the critical early implementation phase of the GCF beyond existing capacities. The project consists of three work areas:

It is implemented in Malawi, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Morocco. The project is implemented through a consortium which PACJA is part of with GermanWatch and CARE Germany leading the process.

Expected Outcome

Enhanced capacity among Civil Society Organizations that enables them engage in a critical and constructive way with governments and relevant institutions in order to contribute to an increase of the transformative effect of GCF projects.

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has been chosen as one of the key partners in a Governing Inclusive Green Growth in Africa (GIGGA) research project.

The project, which will be spearheaded by the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, seeks to lay a foundation for further research into the dynamics, prospects, and implications of green growth on the continent.

“Particular attention will be paid to understanding key challenges for leveraging green growth as a means to tackle inequality and poverty plus interventions that can be honed to transcend existing barriers to deliver results at scale and enhance sustainability,” read a description on their website.

The project seeks to achieve its objective by organizing workshops, mapping existing green growth activities on the continent, analyzing the political and social environment of African societies and assessing the current technology gap on the continent.

“Capacity will be built through collaborative planning, mentoring, and peer networks. Partnership with a leading research and policy think tank in India will promote South-South cooperation,” read the statement on their website.

The research will address issues on a continental level but will focus on Kenya, which has made efforts to embrace green development, Ethiopia, which is pursuing an ambitious green growth strategy, and Nigeria which is the most populous and biggest economy in Africa.

PLANNED IMPACT

The project hopes to influence a greater understanding of current activities and patterns of greening in Africa and the implications for poverty reduction and sustainable development; the motivation of key actors, enabling and constraining political economy factors; key institutions and governance approaches; existing challenges, capacity needs/gaps; barriers and opportunities; potential lessons that can be learned from other developing countries, especially India; and identification of potential solutions and cutting-edge research agenda in the area, read the statement on their website.

Food Security and Climate Change Workshop in the Context of Pastoralism

Engagement in climate change processes requires an understanding of climate change and its impact on pastoralism as a key food source in Kenya. A process that ensures enhancing of capacity to adapt and mitigate climate change at

A process that ensures enhancing of capacity to adapt and mitigate climate change at the pastoral community level and as well integration of community climate actions in government policies and plans is one that aims at achieving sustainability. Therefore, this training intervention sets out to build momentum to achieve sustained pastoralist climate actions with the aim of:

Therefore, this training intervention sets out to build momentum to achieve sustained pastoralist climate actions with the aim of:

To enhance the capacity national platforms, and particularly the 8 priority Chapters, to engage their governments in the implementation of Paris Agreement and SDGs

To facilitate selected national chapters to participate and contribute to sub-regional, regional and international climate change dialogue processes with a view to holding governments to account on their commitment to NDCs and other provisions of Paris Agreement

To strengthen the governance structure of PACJA and national chapters to effectively deliver their mandate